'Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off.' Marlene Dumas' poetic and sensual refrain accompanies her figurative watercolours on view in Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in the southern state of Kerala, India (12 December 2018–29 March 2019).Dumas' new series...

The paintings of Ellen Altfest are ethereal in their detail. Fields of minutiae come together as pulsating images; small brushstrokes of oil paint accumulate over a series of months to single out seemingly innocuous subjects, such as a hand resting atop patterned fabric (The Hand, 2011) or a deep green cactus reaching upwards from beneath a bed of...

On the rooftop of the former Rio Hotel complex in Colombo, it was hard to ignore the high-rise buildings, still under construction, blocking all but a sliver of what used to be an open view over Slave Island, once an island on Beira Lake that housed slaves in the 19th century, and now a downtown suburb. The hotel was set alight during the...

China

Ocula CityHong KongHong Kong now commands global art world attention with the extensive development of the West Kowloon cultural precinct and the recent arrival of the prestigious annual Art Basel Fair. Young, industrious and with a strong vision of the future, the city has attracted a number of blue-chip international galleries to the Central and Sheung Wan districts. Non-profit spaces such as Para|Site and Spring Workshop have expanded the critical scope of contemporary art practice while hybrid destinations such as Duddell's and K11 situate groundbreaking art amongst the city's social spaces.

The Latest On Hong Kong In Ocula Magazine

The paintings of Ellen Altfest are ethereal in their detail. Fields of minutiae come together as pulsating images; small brushstrokes of oil paint accumulate over a series of months to single out seemingly innocuous subjects, such as a hand resting atop patterned fabric (The Hand, 2011) or a deep green cactus reaching upwards from beneath a bed of...

A radiographer by training, Ellen Pau is a self-taught artist who emerged from Hong Kong's fledgling contemporary art scene of the late 1980s, when video was a comparatively nascent medium. In 1986, Pau co-founded Videotage—a non-profit organisation that specialises in the promotion and preservation of video and new media art. Pau has an...

Magnus Renfrew has twice been named by ArtReview as one of the 100 most influential figures in the international art world. In 2008, he came to prominence in Asia's art world and within the wider global scene when he was appointed founding director of Art HK. The fair was subsequently acquired by MCH Group and re-branded in 2013 under Renfrew's...

Cao Fei's first large-scale institutional exhibition in Asia, A hollow in a world too full (8 September 2018–4 January 2019), is taking place at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, the city's new non-profit art centre housed in a former colonial police and prison complex in Central. Organised in collaboration with Ullens Center for Contemporary Art...

Drawn on paper by Oscar Chan Yik Long in gestural black ink strokes, Cupid (2015) greets visitors with a sinister toothy smile as they enter Para Site. The strikingly fearsome figure is positioned on the wall of the gallery's entrance, near one of Chen Dandizi's vertical neon tube lights, part of the series 'Tick Away' (2015), along which a...

In the 1990s, American photographer Catherine Opie rose to fame for her portraits of the lesbian and gay community in Los Angeles. Inspired by the documentary photographs of Berenice Abbott, Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange, among others, Opie cast her otherwise misunderstood and marginalised subjects as dignified individuals through formal...

From Cao Fei's first large-scale institutional exhibition in Asia, to a showing of historical works by Robert Rauschenberg, Ocula contributor Diana d'Arenberg offers her lowdown of shows to see in Hong Kong this autumn.Cao Fei: A hollow in a world too fullTai Kwun Contemporary, 10 Hollywood Rd, Central8 September 2018–4 January 2019Following on...

Nilima Sheikh says it was a different time then. Though always true, what she is describing is the specificity of her life as an artist in India. Born in New Delhi in 1945, Sheikh trained in Baroda, where she now lives. Her paintings contain world lexicons, written in a language she has developed over the last four decades. Integrating source...

The Latest Hong Kong Related Articles

When I call Marilyn Minter in her New York studio, she is not painting, taking photos or doing any of the things you might expect of an artist preparing for their first solo show in Asia. Instead, she is planning a protest.

With his thick-rimmed glasses, Mandarin-collar jacket and broad smile, Johnson Chang is an instantly recognisable figure at many of Hong Kong's art events—but he's famous for far more than his fashion sense.

The colourful, kaleidoscopic patterns that fill the two canvases at the entrance of de Sarthe Gallery appear inscrutable at first glance. They can be a mass of thin tubes, a route map or even a maze. When one takes a few steps back, however, one can perhaps discern views of the titular sites in Hong Kong Central and HSBC (both 2018).In a way, the...

The show, Philip Guston: A Painter’s Forms, 1950–1979, introduces one of the main figures of American abstract expressionism through the use of an audio guide.Narrated by Guston’s daughter Musa Mayer, who is also the curator of the exhibition, the recording takes visitors through the artist’s creative periods and the rich symbolism of his work,...

Can Contemporary Chinese art be revived as a tool for social critique? Returning to the traditional medium of painting, Liu Xiaodong, whose solo exhibition '25 Oil Paintings: 1993-2007' was up at Yallay Gallery in Hong Kong in March, makes a renewed case for this question, departing from the legacy of socialist realism that has occupied the medium...

New Zealand artist Billy Apple seems to have always been in the right place at the right time. In the early 1960s, he moved from Auckland to London and worked alongside artists who would become leading figures in the Pop Art movement, including David Hockney and Pauline Boty.After that he moved on to New York, and in 1964 he collaborated with Andy...

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